Seated between Hallorsen and young Tasburgh, Dinny had a slanting view of her Aunt and Lord Saxenden at the head of the table, with Jean Tasburgh round the corner on his right. “She was a ‘leopardess’ oh! so fair!” The tawnied skin, oblique face, and wonderful eyes of the young woman fascinated her. They appeared also to fascinate Lord Saxenden, whose visage was redder and more genial than Dinny had seen it yet. His attentions to Jean, indeed, were throwing Lady Mont to the clipped tongue of Wilfred Bentworth. For ‘the Squire,’ though a far more distinguished personality, too distinguished to accept a peerage, was, in accordance with the table of precedence, seated on her left. Next to him again Fleur was engaging Hallorsen; so that Dinny herself was exposed to the broadside of young Tasburgh. He talked easily, directly, frankly, like a man not yet calloused by female society, and manifested what Dinny described to herself as ‘transparent admiration’; yet twice at least she went into what he described as a ‘near-dream,’ her head turned high, and motionless, towards his sister.

“Ah!” he said. “What do you think of her?”

“Fascinating.”

“I’ll tell her that, she won’t turn a hair. The earth’s most matter-of-fact young woman. She seems to be vamping her neighbour all right. Who is he?”

“Lord Saxenden.”

“Oh! And who’s the John Bull at the corner on our side?”

“Wilfred Bentworth, ‘the Squire,’ they call him.”

“And next to you — talking to Mrs. Michael?”

“That’s Professor Hallorsen from America.”

“He’s a fine-looking chap.”

“So everybody says,” said Dinny, drily.

“Don’t you think so?”

“Men oughtn’t to be so good-looking.”

“Delighted to hear you say that.”

“Why?”

“It means that the ugly have a look in.”

“Oh! Do you often go trawling?”

“You know, I’m terribly glad I’ve met you at last.”

“At last? You’d never even heard of me this morning.”

“No. But that doesn’t prevent you from being my ideal.”

“Goodness! Is this the way they have in the Navy?”

“Yes. The first thing they teach us is to make up our minds quickly.”

“Mr. Tasburgh —”

“Alan.”

“I begin to understand the wife in every port.”

“I,” said young Tasburgh, seriously, “haven’t a single one. And you’re the first I’ve ever wanted.”

“Oo! Or is it: Coo!”

“Fact! You see, the Navy is very strenuous. When we see what we want, we have to go for it at once. We get so few chances.”

Dinny laughed. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Then you weren’t at Zeebrugge?”

“I was.”

“I see. It’s become a habit to lay yourself alongside.”

“And get blown up for it.”

Her eyes rested on him kindly.

“I am now going to talk to my enemy.”

“Enemy? Can I do anything about that?”

“His demise would be of no service to me, till he’s done what I want.”

“Sorry for that; he looks to me dangerous.”

“Mrs. Charles is lying in wait for you,” murmured Dinny, and she turned to Hallorsen, who said deferentially: “Miss Cherrell,” as if she had arrived from the moon.

“I hear you shot amazingly, Professor.”

“Why! I’m not accustomed to birds asking for it as they do here. I’ll maybe get used to that in time. But all this is quite an experience for me.”

“Everything in the garden lovely?”

“It certainly is. To be in the same house with you is a privilege I feel very deeply, Miss Cherrell.”

“‘Cannon to right of me, cannon to left of me!’” thought Dinny.

“And have you,” she asked, suddenly, “been thinking what amend you can make to my brother?”

Hallorsen lowered his voice.

“I have a great admiration for you, Miss Cherrell, and I will do what you tell me. If you wish, I will write to your papers and withdraw the remarks in my book.”

“And what would you want for that, Professor Hallorsen?”

“Why, surely, nothing but your goodwill.”

“My brother has given me his diary to publish.”

“If that will be a relief to you — go to it.”

“I wonder if you two ever began to understand each other.”

“I judge we never did.”

“And yet you were only four white men, weren’t you? May I ask exactly what annoyed you in my brother?”

“You’d have it up against me if I were to tell you.”

“Oh! no, I CAN be fair.”

“Well, first of all, I found he’d made up his mind about too many things, and he wouldn’t change it. There we were in a country none of us knew anything about, amongst Indians and people that were only half civilised; but the captain wanted everything done as you might in England: he wanted rules, and he wanted ’em kept. Why, I judge he would have dressed for dinner if we’d have let him.”

“I think you should remember,” said Dinny, taken aback, “that we English have found formality pay all over the world. We succeed in all sorts of wild out of the world places because we stay English. Reading his diary, I think my brother failed from not being stolid enough.”

“Well, he is not your John Bull type,” he nodded towards the end of the table, “like Lord Saxenden and Mr. Bentworth there; maybe I’d have understood him better if he were. No, he’s mighty high-strung and very tight held-in; his emotions kind of eat him up from within. He’s like a race-horse in a hansom cab. Yours is an old family, I should judge, Miss Cherrell.”

“Not yet in its dotage.”

She saw his eyes leave her, rest on Adrian across the table, move on to her Aunt Wilmet, and thence to Lady Mont.

“I would like to talk to your uncle the Curator about old families,” he said.

“What else was there in my brother that you didn’t like?”

“Well, he gave me the feeling that I was a great husky.”

Dinny raised her brows a little.

“There we were,” went on Hallorsen, “in the hell of a country — pardon me! — a country of raw metal. Well, I was raw metal myself, out to meet and beat raw metal; and he just wouldn’t be.”

“Perhaps couldn’t be. Don’t you think what was really wrong was your being American and his being English? Confess, Professor, that you don’t like us English.”

Hallorsen laughed.

“I like YOU terribly.”

“Thank you, but every rule —”

“Well,” his face hardened, “I just don’t like the assumption of a superiority that I don’t believe in.”

“Have we a monopoly of that? What about the French?”

“If I were an orang-outang, Miss Cherrell, I wouldn’t care a hoot whether a chimpanzee thought himself superior.”

“I see; too far removed. But, forgive me, Professor, what about yourselves? Are you not the chosen people? And don’t you frequently say so? Would you exchange with any other people in the world?”

“I certainly would not.”

“But isn’t that an assumption of a superiority that WE don’t believe in?”

He laughed. “You have me there; but we haven’t touched rock-bottom in this matter. There’s a snob in every man. We’re a new people; we haven’t gotten your roots and your old things; we haven’t gotten your habit of taking ourselves for granted; we’re too multiple and various and too much in the making. We have a lot of things that you could envy us besides our dollars and our bathrooms.”

“What ought we to envy you? I should very much like it made clear to me.”

“Well, Miss Cherrell, we know that we have qualities and energy and faith and opportunities that you just ought to envy; and when you don’t do it, we feel we’ve no use for that kind of gone-dead, bone-superior attitude. It’s like a man of sixty looking down his nose at a youth of thirty; and there’s no such God-darned — pardon me! — mistake as that.”

Dinny sat looking at him, silent and impressed.

“Where,” Hallorsen went on, “you British irritate us is that you’ve lost the spirit of enquiry; or if you’ve still gotten it, you have a dandy way of hiding it up. I judge there are many ways in which we irritate you. But we irritate your epidermis and you irritate our nerve centres. That’s about all there is to it, Miss Cherrell.”

“I see,” said Dinny; “that’s terribly interesting and I daresay quite true. My aunt’s getting up, so I must remove my epidermis and leave your nerve centres to quiet down.” She rose, and over her shoulder smiled back at him.

Young Tasburgh was at the door. At him too she smiled, and murmured: “Talk to my friend the enemy; he’s worth it.”

In the drawing-room she sought out the ‘leopardess,’ but converse between them suffered from the inhibition of a mutual admiration which neither wished to show. Jean Tasburgh was just twenty-one, but she impressed Dinny as older than herself. Her knowledge of things and people seemed precise and decided, if not profound; her mind was made up on all the subjects they touched on; she would be a marvellous person — Dinny thought — in a crisis, or if driven to the wall; would be loyal to her own side, but want to rule whatever roost she was in. But alongside her hard efficiency Dinny could well perceive a strange, almost feline fascination that would go to any man’s head, if she chose that it should. Hubert would succumb to her at once! And at that conclusion his sister was the more doubtful whether she wished him to. Here was the very girl to afford the swift distraction she was seeking for her brother. But was he strong enough and alive enough for the distractor? Suppose he fell in love with her and she would have none of him? Or suppose he fell in love with her and she had all of him! And then — money! If Hubert received no appointment or lost his commission what would they live on? He had only three hundred a year without his pay, and the girl presumably nothing. The situation was perverse. If Hubert could plunge again into soldiering, he would not need distraction. If he continued to be shelved, he would need distraction but could not afford it. And yet — was not this exactly the sort of girl who would carve out a career somehow for the man she married? So they talked of Italian pictures.

“By the way,” said Jean, suddenly, “Lord Saxenden says you want him to do something for you.”

“Oh!”

“What is it? Because I’ll make him.”

Dinny smiled.

“How?”

Jean gave her a look from under her lashes.

“It’ll be quite easy. What is it you want from him?”

“I want my brother back in his regiment, or, better — some post for him. He’s under a cloud owing to that Bolivian expedition with Professor Hallorsen.”

“The big man? Is that why you had him down here?”

Dinny had a feeling that she would soon have no clothes on.

“If you want frankness, yes.”

“He’s rather fine to look at.”

“So your brother said.”

“Alan’s the most generous person in the world. He’s taken a toss over you.”

“So he was telling me.”

“He’s an ingenuous child. But, seriously, s............